Thursday, October 06, 2005

Bush speech

Watched the Bush speech this morning, and was sort of impressed by the first quarter or so (in that bush setting the bar low kinda way) in which he actually acknowledged the real grievances of our "enemies." Basically, he acknowledged, maybe for the first time, that the US presence in the middle east might have some bearing upon the attacks and didn't once say "they hate us for our freedoms."

Now, after that, I gotta say, the rest of the speech was pretty average, and there was an obvious logical disconnect between the sources of terrorism, which he finally recognized, and the solutions he offered. Also, he maintained Iraq as part of the war on Al Queda saying that if we didn't win in Iraq, Zarqawi and Bin Laden would take over the country. That's crap. The Shia majority will take over Iraq, whether we're there or not, and they will, at most, utilize al Quaeda where their common interests intersect.

Also spent a fair amount of time trying to equate Al Queda with Soviet Communism, which is a poor comparison, then added in Pol Pot and Hitler just for good measure.

And weirdly, his body language collapsed when he was talking about Iraq. He started shifting foot to foot like a guilty schoolboy and seemed to shrink, to get smaller. Then, he turned it back to "defeat the terrorists" and seemed to grow back up.

Anyhow, here's my favorite quotes.

And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.

Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.

(Kinda funny with all the indictments coming down?)

He assures them that this is the road to paradise, though he never offers to go along for the ride.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.

(And the dozen or so Bush kin have voluteered to serve in Iraq?)

No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

(And this is where I get off. In the first part, you recognized the grievances, now you say this.)

Update: Boy, did I get it wrong. The general consensus from the TV news people( is that this sucked. It got seriously panned. I don't know about Fox;I don't watch Fox even on a dare. I find their occasional revisions of history offensive.) Check out these exerpts from the press briefing over at first draft.

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This is not the America I was brought up to believe in.
This blog seeks to highlight abuse of power, deception, corruption, and just plain bad ideas in government and corporations.
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